Vygotsky and Creativity

by Connery, M. Cathrene; John-Steiner, Vera P.; Marjanovic-Shane, Ana

• ISBN13: 9781433107061
• ISBN10: 1433107066
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-05-15
• Publisher: Peter Lang Pub Inc

Summary

This text presents a Vygotskian perspective on children’s and adults’ symbolic engagement in play, multi-modal meaning making, and the arts. Psychologists, artists, and educators present research and practice in a variety of learning environments through the lens of Vygotsky’s cultural historical theory. The connections between creative expression, learning, teaching, and development are situated in a theoretical framework that emphasizes the social origins of individual development and the arts. The authors share a view of learning as an imaginative process rooted in our common need to communicate and transform individual experience through the cultural lifelines of the arts. This book is suitable for readers or courses in the following areas: art and aesthetics; art education; art therapy; cultural historical activity theory; communication; creativity studies; early childhood education; education; educational perspectives; educational psychology; emotional development; cultural and societal foundations; language, literacy, and sociocultural studies; learning and development; mental health and catharsis; multiliteracies; multimodal meaning making; play; play therapy; psychology; semiotics; social construction of meaning; trauma, resilience, and therapeutic processes and practices; and Vygotskian approaches to psychology.

Author Biography

M. Cathrene Connery is Assistant Professor of Education at Ithaca College. A bilingual educator, professor. and advocate, she has drawn on her visual arts education to inform her research and professional activities in language, literacy, and sociocultural studies for the past 25 years.
Vera P. John-Steiner is Emeritus Regents' Professor of Linguistics and Education at the University of New Mexico. She is an international authority on creativity, collaboration, and cultural-historical activity theory, and is the recipient of two lifetime achievement awards from the American Educational Research Association.
Ana Marjanovic-Shane is Assistant Professor of Education at Chestnut Hill College. She has assisted children and their families of the former Yugoslavia as president and program director of the Cultural Education Center ZMAJ in New York City for the past six years.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Theoretical Foundations
Dancing with the Muses: An Cultural-historical Approach To Play, Meaning Making and Creativity	p. 3
The Historical Significance of VygotskyÆs Psychology of Art	p. 17
Without Creating ZPDs There Is No Creativity	p. 27
From Yes and No to Me and You: A Playful Change in Relationships and Meanings	p. 41
Domains of Artistic Expression
Crossing Scripts and Swapping Riffs: Preschoolers Make Musical Meaning	p. 63
The Social Construction of a Visual Language: On Becoming a Painter	p. 83
Dance Dialogues: Creating and Teaching in the Zone of Proximal Development	p. 107
The Inscription of Self in Graphic Texts in School	p. 125
Commitment and Creativity: Transforming Experience into Art	p. 141
Connections Between Creative Expression, Learning, and Development
A Synthetic-Analytic Method for the Study of Perezhivanie: VygotskyÆs Literary Analysis Applied to Playworlds	p. 163
Keeping Ideas and Language in Play: Teaching Drawing, Writing, and Aesthetics in a Secondary Literacy Class	p. 181
Creating Developmental Moments: Teaching and Learning as Creative Activities	p. 199
A Cultural-historical Approach to Creative Education	p. 215
Notes	p. 233
Contributors	p. 237
Index	p. 241
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